Architecture & Art

Merman House

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This two-week course in Bartlett started from a merman mummy displayed in the Horniman Museum. The project focused on creating synergy with special meanings from mundane elements. It was about using human intervention to trigger a sparkle of innovation from the tedious and ordinary life. This idea was developed through the model-making process and consequently turned out to be an outcome of building a fake archaeology scene to convince people that the merman does exist by planting in relevant evidence of his occupation.

The final model was built upon a plan of a Merman House, with the scale of 1 to 10. The house is divided into some basic living spaces, including threshold, living room, bedroom, dressing room, toilet, kitchen, and dining room. Taking the habits of monkey and fish into consideration, I designed the house with a canal and scaffolds as circulations. Origami technique was employed to create ‘evidence’ showing the merman’s occupation, such as beds, table, and cutlery in yellow.